MARBLETOWN >> New York City Department of Environmental Protection releases from the Ashokan Reservoir has washed away the town beach and closed the park for swimming.

The annual summer battle began Wednesday when city officials began sending 500 million gallons of water per day into the Lower Esopus Creek after finding recent rains were causing the Ashokan’s west basin to exceed capacity.

“It’s come back to the mud river again,” town Supervisor Michael Warren said. “We’re not even sure when they’re going to stop the releases. And then, when they stop the releases, how long its going to take to get down to a safe level. And we have to go to replace all the sand, so I’m not sure when (the beach) is going to be available.”

City spokesman Adam Bosch said the releases are intended to bring levels down to 98 percent, with further reductions expected to reach 90 percent by the end of summer.

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“We’re looking to maybe shut down the release for the weekend, but we are consulting with (state Department of Environmental Conservation officials), and they have told us to hold it at 500 (million gallons per day) for now.”

Bosch said later in the email that the amount of water was increased on Thursday to 600 million gallons per day.

Bosch said the releases are being done to create a void in the west basin and not turbidity control, which has been done in the past so the city does not send muddy water into its reservoir at Kensico. However, muddy releases into the 32-mile-long Lower Esopus Creek has been an environmental concern because of its effects on areas that include the Hudson River and its estuaries.

“The quality of the (current) release is crystal clear,” he said. “Obviously we don’t feel great about having closed the Marbletown beach for another summer again and having impacts on their sand. We’ve got this legally-binding protocol we’ve got to follow. Flood mitigation was something that was important to the downstream communities (and) that’s what these releases are intended to do.”

Warren said city officials are incorrectly portraying the protocol as a requirement and the agency could have begun reducing the west basin level last month when it first approached full capacity.

“The DEC has a ... guideline that’s not hard and fast,” he said. “They blame it on the DEC, yet they didn’t even ask. They were up at 98 percent over a month ago.”

Bosch said there was an attempt to bring down the level by sending west basin water down to the Kensico Reservoir because the quality was good enough, but the city couldn’t keep up with recent rainfall amounts.

“We’d been going through this really, really prolonged dry spell and, in fact, in the Delaware system we were within a couple days of drought watch,” he said.

“May was the lowest runoff for May in watershed history,” Bosch added. “So we were really ... concerned about the potential for a prolonged dry period and what that would mean for reservoir storage and rules that surround drought.”

Bosch also said there was a concern about drought because the Schoharie Reservoir, which goes into the Upper Esopus Creek and feeds the Ashokan Reservoir, was at only 8 percent of capacity before storms last month.

“It was the lowest that we could find the Schoharie had ever been,” he said.